It’s been almost a year since my last post about this, and so I’ve decided to update my tips about monetizing an anime blog. For anyone who wants to include ads on their blog, I highly recommend the Who Sees Ads plugin, so that you can limit ads to certain crowds (or exclude your regular visitors from ads). I’m not going to go all Billy Mays here, but these are some services that I’ve tried and found to be useful. Even if you use all of them, you probably won’t generate a ton of income; still it’s nice to be able to cover some/all of your costs.
The Summary
- For CPM: Adbrite is good. Others may pay more, but good luck getting in.
- For CPC: Adsense is the best.
- For CPA: I have decided that CPA sucks.
- Text Links: They were great, but got nerfed. Google hates text links.
Adbrite
Adbrite lets you define your site’s audience, and uses this profile to match you up with advertisers. To be honest, the results do not match as well as Adsense, but this is not a problem. Why? Because Adbrite is probably the easiest way to get CPM ads on your site. CPM ads pay every 1,000 times your page is viewed, and so there is no clicking involved. The way I use Adbrite is that I reject all CPC (ads must be clicked for you to get paid) and only allow CPM ads. You can individually reject the more annoying CPM banners and the ads no longer need to match your site perfectly for you to earn money. For niche sites like anime blogs, this is very useful. I have tried applying to other CPM services like Casale and Value Click, but even though SS!AB exceeded the quota for daily visitors they still said no.
Adbrite also has some other neat features. You can set a price point where if Adbrite isn’t doing well enough the block will switch over to another advertising service (i.e. Adsense). I prefer to just display the Adbrite CPM banners as much as possible, but I’ve set it so that when nothing is available, Adsense ads will fill the space. Adbrite is safe to use alongside Adsense, as Adbrite is not contextual.
How is it doing so far? Well, it’s not huge money, but it is very steady. Another advantage of Adbrite is that you can get paid every $25 instead of $100 like with Adsense. I wouldn’t say that Adbrite is absolutely better than Adsense, but if you are unsatisfied with the ads or clicks you are getting with Adsense, I would give Adbrite a try. The option to switch to higher paying ads automatically makes Adbrite a very low risk option for many bloggers. Several of the banners are kinda annoying/animated, but if you go for just CPM you can bury these banners near the bottom of your page.
Adsense
Same as it ever was. For anime blogs, the pool of advertisers is not great. However, Adsense is quite steady and if you have a lot of text for Adsense to use then you can earn decent dollars. The two problems with Adsense are that you have to earn $100 before you get paid and viewers have to click on ads for you to earn money. Even with ad-blindness running rampant, this is still the workhorse that funds the majority of SS!AB’s bills. For relevant CPC ads, Adsense is still number one in my book.
When we switched to an only-excerpts format on the front page, we took away many of the keywords that helped generate relevant Adsense ads. There are still Adsense ads on individual posts, but I decided to look into non-contextual ads for the front page. I have found that Adsense works nicely in conjunction with a separate CPM service.
Affiliate Services
You know what, CPA (someone has to do something beyond clicking for you to get paid) ads suck. I think with certain genres this could work, but anime is not one of them. It’s hard enough getting anyone to click ads, let alone do something afterwards. I’ve been using Amazon, and even though the results are extremely relevant the results are demoralizing.
Text Links
This was a really great earner last year. Unfortunately, Google started dropping the ban-hammer on a bunch of these services, and lowering PageRank on sites that sold text links. Bummer. If you lost PageRank (which does not determine how high your site comes up in searches), there are a number of places to check for advice on getting the page rank back. After the scare, the pool dried up quite a bit, so I’ve gone away from text links. Such a pity, considering that Text-Link-Ads was a great money-maker while it lasted. If you don’t care about PageRank, they’re still worth a try. In less than a year, TLA single-handedly covered the costs of SS!AB and enabled us to hold our first giveaway contest.
12 Comments
There’s also selling ads directly, but this requires some effort, sending e-mails, etc. This is probably better for your visitors as the ads will likely be relevant to your site.
You also forgot viral guerrilla marketing. Timotei!
I have only ever used AdSense, and in like 6 months I made dick on SOS, as opposed to an old music blog that’s been stagnant for a lifetime and still collects adsense dollars. I’ve had the ads off for about a month.
Not sure if it’s ad-blindness or just the community factor of people visiting each others’ sites. Until joining 9rules, I think I had literally zero clicks because I didn’t have a lot of
suckersrandom traffic.Maybe I’ll try Adbrite. Or take a cue from Sunrise and see what product placement can do for me.
super rats: I would like to hear from anyone who has done this. It sounds somewhat difficult, and I am not sure what infrastructure has to be in place (for the advertiser to track everything), but it is definitely something I’d like to know more about!
Chris: Yeah, but that took like 20-25 years before it came through…
otou-san: For right now, I think Adsense pays more, but you should make at least a few cents every day from Adbrite if you use mostly CPM. This is good on sites where no one likes to click any of the ads. Plus the Adbrite payout amount is much lower, and you can easily set up a backup ad service to automatically use whenever the Adbrite ads are not paying enough. I had no idea that those SOS-dan moments in Haruhi were your attempts at product placement!
I’m always on the look out to earn a quick buck but don’t want to be too invasive when it comes to ad placement. I guess AdBrite fulfills that criteria from the looks of it. Thanks!
It is a little difficult to get. You do need a certain amount of traffic, obviously. I’ve only just begun trying to sell ads here and there, like contacting one store a week — still need an advertise here type page on my site. Even though I only have one advertiser, it’s more satisfying to know that the ad is actually relevant to what I’m blogging.
The software for tracking and reporting is pretty easy. OpenX is free ad management software and takes 15-20 minutes to install and configure.
I’ve actually installed OpenAds and it was easy, but I never used it. Thank you for the information; I’ll have to do some research and see if there is any way to use it as you say.
Hmm, I still get confused with all these ad options (not that I need them). If I were to click on one of your ads, does that mean you make money? If so, I’LL CLICK ADS ALL DAY IF I HAVE TO!!!
Anything for you Kabi-kun!
Ahhh, please don’t click on ads all the time, unless you are actually interested! Fraudulent clicks get the webmaster banned from services like Adsense. Plus with CPM ads (about half the ads on here are CPM), the viewer doesn’t have to do anything except visit SS!AB.
*THINKS PERVERTED THINGS* *BLUSH*err, ignore that…Hmm, alright then, I’ll make it my duty to visit SS!AB everyday, even if I don’t comment! =3, but I’ll just go ahead and click that WoW ad once, cause I really don’t know anything about that game!
Edit: Darn it! Now its an ad about Handbags! I swear I don’t go that way! Honest!!!
well I feel like quite the ass now that I replaced adsense with adbrite based on this advice — it seems to be doing ok, but I’m now running the same ads as SS!AB.
Haha, buy Black Lagoon.